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LASSIE 


BY THE AUTHOR OF 

“MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION/’ “BELLE, 
“TOM’S BOY,” etc. 


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BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1901 



THE U8RARY OF 
CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 


OCT, 4 1901 


3H3HT ENTRY 


CLASS Q XXo. No. 
copy a 



Copyright , 1901, 

By Little, Brown, and Company. 


A ll rights reserved. 


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UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 


LASSIE. 


CHAPTER I. 

A quiet, little, out-of-the-way village 
is Midgely, and its inhabitants practise 
the good old rule of ‘ Early to bed and 
early to rise/ though I am not sure that 
it produces the desired effect of making 
them ‘ healthy, wealthy, and wise/ 

On a certain Sunday evening in Octo- 
ber, most of the lights in the village were 
out though it was barely nine o’clock; 
but, in the Wingates’ thatched cottage, 
a dim light shone between the curtains 
of the bedroom window, telling of some 
one w r aking or watching within. 

1 


2 


LASSIE. 


But the two occupants of that room 
could hardly be said to be either waking 
or watching, for Mrs. Wingate was com- 
ing very near her last long sleep ; and 
the deaf old crone by the bedside, who 
had been waiting all the evening with 
ill-concealed impatience to begin her 
work of laying out the body, had 
dropped off into an uneasy sleep, with 
many jerks of a heavy head, and snorts 
and groans of discomfort. For the old 
lady had been longer in dying than Mrs. 
Murphy had reckoned on, and she felt 
a little bit hardly used at having an- 
other night’s rest disturbed. But once, 
when she woke with a start, she saw in 
the dim light of the little, smoky, paraffin 
lamp that the dying lips were moving, 
and made out with some difficulty that 


LASSIE. 


3 


the words they were trying to form were, 
‘ Send for Lassie.' 

And those were the last words that 
came from Mrs. Wingate’s lips; and yet, 
not the very last, for the ruling passion 
strong in death made the tired brain 
rouse itself again with a final effort from 
the long sleep, to try and explain where 
the master’s new pipe was stowed away, 
and the screw of tobacco in the pie-dish 
on the shelf in the wash-house, before 
she set Mrs. Murphy free to finish her 
work and go home to her well-earned 
rest. 

Mrs. Wingate’s ruling passion had 
been the care of what the rest of the 
world of Midgely called a worthless, 
drunken, good-for-nothing husband, for 
whom she had slaved and toiled night 


4 


LASSIE. 


and day, and whose battles she had 
fought against all the neighbours’ candid 
criticisms, though at the bottom of her 
heart she was shrewd enough to know 
that the worst they said was true, and a 
good deal more known only to herself. 

And yet, while she knew all his faults 
only too well by heart, she took him a 
good deal at his own valuation, and 
admired the smartness and education 
and knowledge of the world to which 
he laid claim ; though she, poor soul, 
before all others should have been, and 
in truth was, aware what a fraud his 
pretensions were. But that is the way 
with love ; it sees the clay feet clear 
enough, but worships the image all the 
same. 

He never thought now of coming into 


LASSIE. 


5 


the little, stuffy bedroom where his wife 
lay a-dying, to see her off on her long 
journey which was to part them ; nor 
did she expect it of him. He had 
reached a solemnly maudlin condition 
by this time, in consequence of neigh- 
bourly sympathy taking the form of 
half-pints at the ‘ Jolly Farmers ; 9 and 
though he complained dolefully of how 
‘ unked ’ it was, and of how ‘ terrible put 
about ’ he felt, with no one to get him a 
bit of victuals, he felt a sort of impor- 
tance in the position of having a missus 
of whom the doctor ‘ did n’t give no 
hopes, and as ain’t likely to see the day 
out/ 

Now, Lassie would have come from 
the other end of the world if she had 
known of her mother’s illness ; but how 


6 


LASSIE. 


was she to know ? Letters from home 
were few and far between, mother being 
avowedly a poor scholar ; and father, 
who had always had the reputation of 
being a ‘ terrible fine writer/ having 
shrunk of late years from putting this 
reputation to the test by practical use of 
the rusty steel pen (used also for cleaning 
out his pipe) and the dried-up ink-bottle 
on the mantelpiece, made available by a 
drop or two of hot water. 

He had, however, on this occasion 
managed to get a few lines written, 
‘ hoping it found her well as it left him 
at present/ and mentioning the main 
object of his writing — her mother’s 
illness — in a casual way, and in very 
modified terms, such as would hardly of 
itself have roused any anxiety. 


LASSIE. 


7 


Even this letter lay unposted on the 
dresser for a couple of days, and might 
easily have been mislaid among the odds 
and ends that accumulate about a place 
when there are no women-folk to tidy up, 
but that the baker’s boy, when he 
brought the Wingates’ loaf, found it and 
shouted up the stairs to ask if he should 
put it in the post — the post-office being 
at the baker’s. 

Mrs. Jones at the post-office, finding 
the envelope open, took the liberty to 
read its contents, such being the friendly 
custom at Midgely. She likewise took 
upon herself to add a postscript of a di- 
rect and forcible nature — ‘ Her ’s took 
for death ; you best come to onst ’ — in 
characters that looked as if written with 
the wrong end of the pen, and of a black- 


8 


LASSIE. 


ness in striking contrast with Timothy 
Wingate's pale-brown writing. 

Besides this, Mrs. Wingate had not 
been ill many days — that is to say, she 
had not been twice as ill as most of us 
are when we take to our beds and send 
for a doctor. 

Why, she stood at the wash-tub all 
Tuesday. Tuesday was her washing-day, 
and she must have been ill indeed if the 
wash-tub was not steaming away by eight 
o'clock in the morning. And she washed 
for several of the neighbours since Tim- 
othy had that rheumatic attack, on the 
memory of which he lived a life of idle- 
ness and much complaining ever since. 

She felt a bit shaky on her legs, but 
that was not a very uncommon symptom 
of late years ; and one of the neighbours 


LASSIE. 


9 


who dropped in told her she ‘looked 
sadly * and was ‘ a burden to see/ but 
that was only a compliment, as in 
another rank you might tell any one 
she looked charming. 

It was a good drying day, so she did a 
little more work than usual, and put off her 
midday meal for an early cup of tea, to 
which she was just sitting down when 
loud remarks from the pig-sty announced 
the fact that Tim had forgotten to feed 
the pig. 

Tim did not like washing-days, and had 
gladly accepted the offer of the butcher 
to drive him over to a neighbouring farm 
to fetch a calf. He had come in tired to 
death ‘with the joggling of that there 
cart, as did seem to shake every bone in 
his body ! And Pullen never so much as 


10 


LASSIE. 


to offer him a drink after all the dust he’d 
a-swallered ! 9 So it was not to be expected 
that he could stir from his arm-chair after 
he had spread his red pocket-handker- 
chief over his knees, and poured his tea 
out in the saucer to cool. 

So the missus had to get up and silence 
the noisy clamour in the pig-sty, and this 
effort seemed to be the last straw that 
broke the back that had borne the bur- 
den of life so patiently ; for she did not 
come back though her tea was more than 
cool, and though Tim was shouting to 
know if she was going to be all day 
over the job, and to tell her to look 
sharp as the kettle w r as boiling over. 

A passer-by saw something lying on 
the brick path, with a faded lilac sun- 
bonnet against the lavender bush, and 


LASSIE. 


11 


stepping in, picked up the old woman, 
a mere bag of bones, and carried her in, 
and went for the doctor ; seeing there 
was that remarkable look about the face 
as of one set Zionwards, and a limp drop 
in the old, hard-worked hands as if the 
six days of labour were over for them, 
and the Sabbath of the Lord were 
dawning. 

That was on the Tuesday. Every one 
at Midgely recollected that, because it 
was washing-day with most of them ; and 
on Sunday she died; and on Monday 
Lassie came. 


CHAPTER II. 


The congregation was pouring out of 
Westminster Abbey that Sunday evening 
in October when Mrs. Wingate died. 

It is a far cry from quiet little Midgely, 
and the cottage bedroom where the old 
woman’s last laboured breath was drawn, 
to great Babylon and the stately Abbey, 
where so many of earth’s greatest and 
best sleep their last sleep. And yet to 
one of the congregation gathered there 
that evening odd little details of that 
country home and mother kept recur- 
ring quite unaccountably, as it seemed 
to her. 


LASSIE. 


13 


There did not seem much connection 
of ideas between the rolling peals of the 
great organ, or the beautiful harmonies 
of the well-trained choir, and a cracked 
old woman’s voice singing over the soap- 
suds a simple hymn a little bit out of 
tune, and adorned with small, unneces- 
sary turns and flourishes, exasperating to 
an accurate ear. Nor did the elaborate 
hat, obscuring the prospect in front with 
a profusion of gigantic roses, bear any 
resemblance to a faded old sun-bonnet ; 
nor was the voice of the preacher, as he 
gave out his text in clear accents — 
6 For I am a man under authority, 
having soldiers under me, and I say 
unto this man, Go, and he goeth ; and 
to another, Come, and he cometh ; and 
to my servant, Do this, and he doeth 


14 


LASSIE. 


it ’ — obviously suggestive of a voice 
indistinct from lack of teeth, and with 
a broad Loamshire accent, saying, 
‘ There, child, take and go ! ’ with a 
touch of a hardworked hand ( damp 
from the wash-tub) on perhaps an un- 
willing shoulder. 

But when once the sermon had be- 
gun, Lassie Wingate’s mind was no 
longer distracted by thoughts of home 
and mother any more than the child 
Samuel when he lay down 4 ere the 
lamp of God went out in the temple of 
the Lord,’ thought of Hannah and the 
country home in Mount Ephraim ; and 
she leaned forward, with such a look on 
her face as the boy may have had when 
he answered, ‘ Speak, for thy servant 
heareth.’ 


LASSIE. 


15 


The preacher began by dwelling on 
the marvellous faith of the heathen 
Roman centurion in recognising in the 
humble Galilean Teacher, with His 
rough following of ignorant fishermen 
and despised publicans, One in whose 
hands were the issues of life and death, 
who could speak the word of command 
and bid sickness and suffering and death 
go, and life and healing come, just as he 
himself obeyed the orders of his supe- 
rior officer, or exacted prompt obedience 
from his well-disciplined century of 
men. Then he went on to speak of the 
great Captain of our Salvation, who for 
our sakes became a man under authority, 
and took upon Him the form of a ser- 
vant; who came not to do His own will, 
but the will of His Father, and bore the 


16 


LASSIE. 


yoke of the law and the heavy disci- 
pline of life, and was obedient to the 
death, even the death of the Cross ; and 
how He expects the like obedience from 
His faithful soldiers and servants, and 
says to this man 1 Go,’ and he goeth, 
and to another ‘ Come,’ and he cometh, 
and to His servant 4 Do this/ and he 
doeth it. The word of command comes 
in different ways and at different times : 
sometimes as it did to Adam in the 
garden in the cool of the evening ; to 
Noah in the noisy turmoil of an evil 
world, eating and drinking, marrying and 
giving in marriage ; to the boy Samuel 
in the quiet courts of the tabernacle at 
Shiloh, in the still Eastern night, when 
he had laid aside the linen epliod in 
which he ministered before the Lord, 


LASSIE. 


17 


and the little coat made by his mother’s 
loving hands, and was laid down to 
sleep ; to Matthew in the fretting, sor- 
did strife of the receipt of custom in the 
busy town ; to Simon Peter mending 
his nets by the blue sea of Galilee. It 
is the same now, but in this hurrying, 
restless life of ours we are apt to miss 
the call. We must pray that to us the 
ejohphatha may be spoken, and our dull 
ears, deafened by the noises of the 
world, may be opened ; and that, having 
heard what things we ought to do, we 
may have grace and power faithfully to 
fulfil the same, and whatsoever He saith 
unto us, do it. 

That intent look on Lassie’s face as 
she listened was noticed with a feeling 
almost akin to irritation by her com- 


2 


18 


LASSIE. 


panion, who, as well as Lassie Wingate, 
wore the uniform of the Nurses of St. 
Barnabas Hospital. It was not that 
Alice Nugent did not sympathise with 
Lassie to a very great extent in her 
feelings, but this sermon was curiously 
appropriate to a subject which had been 
much discussed between the friends of 
late — a subject in which, as had often 
before been the case, Lassie’s enthusiasm 
had led the way, carrying Alice Nugent 
along with her almost against her will, 
and setting aside such obstacles as 
Alice’s less excitable temperament saw 
in the way. 

They were great friends these two, 
with much in common, and yet differing 
sufficiently for one to be the complement 
of the other, and make up what was 


LASSIE. 


19 


wanting in the others character, as true 
friends should, being counterparts, not 
duplicates of one another ; Lassie’s spirit 
and energy and enterprise supplying the 
motive power, while Alice Nugent’s 
common-sense and sound judgment acted 
as ballast. 

In the nurse’s dress it is not always 
easy to estimate rank, but a discriminat- 
ing observer, seeing these two girls sit- 
ting side by side, would have guessed at 
a glance that the tall, dark girl was a 
lady born and bred, there being an 
unmistakably thorough-bred look about 
her clean-cut, refined face and the pose 
of her well set head ; while the other girl 
with her thick-set figure and round, rosy 
face, and somewhat inelegant attitude, 
was as evidently from a lower rank. 


20 


LASSIE. 


So you would have judged at first 
glance — and perhaps for a good many 
further glances — and you would have 
judged quite wrongly, for the tall, dark 
nurse was Lassie Wingate, to whose 
father and mother we have been intro- 
duced in the first chapter ; while Nurse 
Nugent has an ‘ honourable ’ before her 
name, and blue blood running under the 
thick nails of her stumpy little hands 
and freckled skin, and has a long pedi- 
gree of cultured and elegant ancestors, 
such as should by right have transmitted 
an inheritance of grace and refinement 
both of body and mind. 

But such are the freaks of Nature, 
as dog-fanciers occasionally experience 
when she presents them with a fault- 
lessly perfect mongrel, and brings out 


LASSIE. 


21 


in some carefully-bred treasure a blem- 
ish, derived, no doubt, from some remote 
ancestor who had made a mesalliance 
unrecorded in history, and so entailed 
on his descendant, after many genera- 
tions, a white toe or a pricked ear, mean- 
ing a consequent loss of value, highly 
vexatious to his possessor. 

Perhaps there had been at first a 
touch of condescension in Nurse Nugent’s 
liking for Nurse Wingate, who was wise 
and honest enough to make no conceal- 
ment of her humble origin, and who, 
perhaps, on her side, felt a little elated 
at being distinguished and sought out 
by the one of all the nurses who was 
most highly connected and aristocratic. 

But by the time my story begins 
both condescension and elation had long 


22 


LASSIE. 


since been merged in the sincere affec- 
tion of the two girls, and I do not think 
Lassie thought any more of belted earls 
and Norman blood in connection with 
Alice Nugent than Alice did of clod- 
hoppers and boors in connection with 
Lassie Wingate. 

You cannot make a silk purse out of 
a sow’s ear, the saying is; and a very 
good thing, too, in this highly commer- 
cial age of ours, for if such a metamor- 
phosis had been possible, and especially 
if the silk purse were found to contain 
a coin or two, poor old mother pig would 
go crop-eared for the rest of her days, 
and despoiled of her beautiful — I say 
it advisedly, in spite of the pig-sty and 
unsavoury surroundings — her beautiful 
natural organ of hearing. But that 


LASSIE. 


23 


great refiner Love, when he gets hold of 
a piece of good metal — there must be 
that to begin with, for even love cannot 
do anything with base metal — can work 
wonders. So the love of her work had 
put the guinea-stamp on what had been 
sterling to start with ; and her love for 
Alice had strengthened the impression; 

and her love for But that she 

hardly realised herself, so perhaps we 
should not mention it just yet. 

The subject that had been discussed 
so much between the girls of late had 
been that of volunteering for nursing 
in South Africa, where war had just been 
declared. In her heart of hearts Alice 
Nugent would have been well content 
to stay at St. Barnabas, but Lassie had 
taken up the idea of volunteering so 


24 


LASSIE. 


strongly and ardently that Alice, almost 
in spite of herself, was infected by her 
friend’s enthusiasm — swept off her feet, 
as it were, and carried along by the 
swift-running tide, when she would just 
as soon have stayed quietly on the 
shore. 

To-day she was feeling tired, and a 
little discouraged by some episode in her 
day’s work, and Lassie’s rapturous antic- 
ipations of all the dangers and hardships 
and privations of a field-hospital, which 
only seemed to whet her desire to face 
them, did not appear so very alluring to 
her friend. And now, when she really 
thought she had produced some effect 
on Lassie by her arguments that they 
were very well where they were, and 
that there was plenty of good and 


LASSIE. 


25 


valuable work to be done at home, there 
came this sermon to add fuel to the fire, 
and she could feel how Lassie’s every 
nerve was thrilling in response to what 
she felt was a direct call ; and Alice 
knew that Lassie was not one to turn a 
deaf ear or change her mind, and that 
once realising the order, ‘ Do this,’ as 
being to her, she would not hesitate to 
obey. 

The service was over, and the congre- 
gation poured out into the busy, gas-lit 
streets, the pealing organ tones following 
them out, like a yearning mother’s love, 
till they were drowned in life’s stunning 
tide, choked by the cares and riches and 
pleasures of the world. 

Lassie put her hand under her friend’s 
arm, and they turned with tacit consent 


26 


LASSIE. 


towards the river, and stood, still in si- 
lence, on the embankment, watching the 
black, oily rush of the water sweeping 
past, and the line of lights across the 
bridge reflected in waving lines on the 
surface. Scattered lights on the other 
side made more intense the darkness of 
the great masses of buildings, behind 
which the lurid light from the streets 
throbbed up into the sky, like the smoke 
of the cities of the plain when Abraham 
got up early in the morning and looked 
towards them after the last ‘ peradvent- 
ure ’ had been said and the ten righteous 
had not been found ; while overhead a 
troubled, pale young moon veiled her 
face behind hurrying clouds, as if for the 
sorrow and shame of the London streets. 

The two girls stood for a few min- 


LASSIE. 


27 


utes in that sympathetic silence that 
is sometimes more eloquent than words. 
It was Alice who first spoke, and she 
drew her arm almost brusquely away 
from Lassie’s hand as if she half-resented 
the influence which, however, she could 
not resist. 

‘ Well, then, I suppose it 7 s all settled, 
and we ’d better fill in our papers and 
send them at once. I dare say there 
won’t be any war. The Boers will be 
frightened as soon as they see we really 
mean business.’ 

4 So much the better,’ answered Lassie, 
‘if we ’re not wanted ; but I shan’t feel 
easy till I ’m on the army nursing re- 
serve. Oh ! Alice, would n’t it be just 
glorious if we were together out there! 
But I suppose that ’s too good luck to 


28 


LASSIE. 


reckon on ; and even if we both go, we 
may be hundreds of miles apart/ 

1 1 don’t see that there ’s much glori- 
ous about it,’ Alice said a little fretfully. 
‘And I tell you what it is, Lassie, we 
are sure to get more kicks than half- 
pence, and do all the dirty work, and 
see other people get the credit. And 
you need n’t go prancing off that way, 
as if South Africa were just round the 
corner. Half the nurses in England 
will volunteer, so I dare say we sha’n’t 
have a chance.’ 

And then Big Ben struck out nine 
great, strong, solemn notes, and the 
girls turned to go back to St. Barnabas ; 
but, before they left the embankment, 
Lassie bent and kissed her friend’s 
cheek, saying, with a little tremble of 


LASSIE. 


29 


emotion in her voice, all the more 
noticeable as she was not usually dem- 
onstrative or emotional, least of all in 
religious matters: Whatsoever He 

saith unto you, do it.” We shall think 
of that in South Africa.’ 

‘ Or at home,’ Alice answered rather 
gruffly, to conceal the thrill that re- 
sponded to Lassie’s enthusiasm. 

As the two girls passed into the hos- 
pital, Alice glanced into the office. 

‘ Why, there ’s a letter for you, Lassie. 
It must have come last night, and you 
never thought to look for it.’ 

A letter with the Midgely post-mark, 
and directed in her father’s writing, with 
an uncertainty in the spelling of the 
word ‘ hospital,’ and a smear to conceal 
the intrusion of an unnecessary ‘ r.’ 


30 


LASSIE. 


And then she opened the letter, and 
her eye was caught at once by the post- 
script in Mrs. Jones’s black and decided 
characters : 

‘ Her ’s took for death ; you best come 
to onst.’ 


CHAPTER III. 

I have said that Lassie would have 
come from the other end of the world if 
she had known that her mother was ill, 
for between mother and daughter there 
was a very close bond of affection of an 
entirely undemonstrative character, per- 
haps all the stronger for finding no out- 
ward expression. But Lassie’s feeling 
for her father was very different ; and at 
the time of her confirmation, when the 
good old vicar was preparing the village 
maidens for the rite, she had told him, 
with passionate tears in her honest 
young eyes : 1 Please, sir, I can’t be done 


32 


LASSIE. 


this time, thank you, for I can’t honour 
father — no ! that I can’t ! — so I don’t 
think I ought to pretend I ’m keeping 
God’s commandments.’ 

The old vicar, who knew Tim’s pecul- 
iarities, which were not of a kind to in- 
spire filial respect, softened down the 
obligation laid upon her, and bade her, 
as much as was possible, be obedient 
and forbearing, for God did not expect 
impossibilities. He shook his gentle old 
head sadly when, the very next day, an 
aggrieved mother represented to him in 
high-pitched accents of wrath how ‘ that 
gal of Wingate’s had boxed her Liza’s 
ears shameful because she said old 
Tim was drunk, as was nothing but the 
truth, as did ought to be ashamed of 
hisself ! ’ 


LASSIE. 


33 


He calmed the infuriated mother, and 
patted Liza’s crimson ear soothingly, and 
seeking out the culprit, found out what 
he had half-guessed might be the expla- 
nation : ^ If I can’t honour him myself, I 
won’t let any one else dishonour him — 
that I won’t ! ’ 

Tim had an uneasy consciousness that 
this young daughter of his took his meas- 
ure pretty accurately, and he writhed a 
little under the direct look of her gray 
eyes, that set aside all the little pre- 
tences that imposed more or less on 
other people and on himself, and left 
him exposed as the poor, worthless 
creature he really was. 

‘ It ain’t what I call dootiful,’ he would 
protest to his wife ; ‘ if she don’t contra- 
dick flat, she looks it all the same. Cliil- 


3 


34 


LASSIE. 


dren was n’t like that in my young days ; 
they minded what their elders and bet- 
ters told them, and did n’t set theirselves 
up to know better. I ’d not have turned 
out the man I be if my father had let me 
cheek him that fashion.’ 

And it struck neither him nor his wife 
that the result was not a forcible recom- 
mendation of the training. 

So it was a decided relief to Tim when 
Lassie left school and got a place as 
nursery-maid with the vicar’s married 
daughter, and moved away from Midgely. 
Her mother was not sorry either, as the 
collisions between father and daughter 
worried her, having always to take the 
part of the one whom she knew to be in 
the wrong, and to soften down and cover 
up little slips she would hardly have 


LASSIE. 


35 


noticed herself if the girl’s clear eyes 
had not been so keenly alive to them. 

Tim in her absence started a sort of 
fatherly pride in ‘my gal,’ and talked 
to the neighbours of how she was 
getting on, and what a lot her missus 
thought of her, and of the well-written 
letters, ‘ wrote for all the world like a 
book/ which came so regularly. ‘’Tis 
plain to see who she takes after/ he 
would say, ‘ as the missus ain’t never 
been much of a scholard or given to 
book-larninV 

So Lassie’s accomplishments became 
another feather in his cap, instead of 
being an aggravation as when she was 
at home. 

Her few holidays were not long enough 
to allow of much jarring, and Tim was 


36 


LASSIE. 


on his best behaviour, and her mother 
would not have dreamed of complaining 
of him ; indeed, I do not think she ever 
felt there was anything to complain of. 

But each holiday was less of a pleasure 
to Lassie than the preceding one, though 
she would hardly acknowledge the fact 
to herself. She was growing away from 
the old life year by year, month by 
month, almost day by day, and it was 
nearly with a sense of relief that, when 
her holiday was over, she got into the 
train that was to take her away from 
Midgely ; though before she was out of 
sight of the station a sudden qualm of 
compunction made her lean out of the 
window, and wave her hand, and nod to 
the little, shrunken-up figure on the 
platform, whose eyes were too misty 


LASSIE. 


37 


under the big print sun-bonnet to dis- 
cern these tardy demonstrations. 

She was hardly sorry when one year 
her holiday was prevented by the illness 
of one of the children, and she gained 
praise, which she was conscious was un- 
merited, for the willingness with which 
she gave it up. 

It was that illness that led her to take 
up nursing, and she was admitted as pro- 
bationer at St. Barnabas, one of the big 
London hospitals. 

She took to the work with the great- 
est delight and enthusiasm, and loved it 
so much that she could not fail to do it 
well; and she was so strong in body, 
and bright and intelligent in mind, that 
nothing seemed hard or disagreeable to 
her. 


38 


LASSIE. 


‘ Well, a-never!’ Mrs. Wingate said 
when she first heard of it. ‘ To think 
of Lassie messing about after a lot of 
sick folk ! Men, too, as is always 
awk’ard sort of bodies when there ’s 
ought amiss with them. Bless us! if a 
husband ain’t about as much as one 
woman can manage, sick or well ; it ’s 
all her day’s work to see to him. There ’s 
a deal talked about nursing these days ; 
but, lor’ bless ye ! we got along well 
enough in old days. Each on us minded 
our own sick ; and when folk went into 
the ’firm ary, there was two or three old 
women as wasn’t good for nothing else 
to do for ’em.’ 

Lassie had only been home once in 
the five years during which she had 
been at St. Barnabas, each year some- 


LASSIE. 


39 


thing having occurred to prevent the 
going home — something which perhaps 
might not have stood in the way if she 
had been more keenly set on going, 
but which easily assumed sufficient pro- 
portions when there was not a very 
decided will to clear the way. 

One year it was a pressing invitation 
from her old mistress, who was living in 
Ireland ; and on three other occasions 
another of the nurses at St. Barnabas, 
w T ho was taking her holiday at the same 
time, persuaded her to come to the sea 
with her. The old people quite ac- 
quiesced in the arrangements, and if 
there was any disappointment felt, and 
a tear or two splashed into the wash- 
tub, or on the darn in the master's 
stockings which were being ‘ goblified * 


40 


LAJSSIE. 


for Sunday, no trace of it was to be 
detected in the laborious letters that 
reached her at long intervals. 

Her one visit was not very pleasant 
to any of them, as it was in the first 
year of her training, when she was full 
of undigested scraps of knowledge of 
hygiene and sanitation, not at all in 
accordance with old-fashioned cottage 
ways ; and she was inclined to introduce 
sweeping and drastic reforms, filling up 
the old bottles of custom and imme- 
morial usage with the strong wine of 
her young wisdom, which had not yet 
had time to settle down from its first 
raw exuberance. 

So that holiday of Lassie’s was not a 
very enjoyable one at the time, though 
when next she came to Midgely, on that 


LASSIE. 


41 


Monday which I have mentioned before, 
it seemed very sunny to look back up- 
on ; certain things, such as old print sun- 
bonnets, having the knack of painting 
themselves on the memory with sun- 
shiny effects which we are not aware of 
when they are actually present, and we 
are looking at them and perhaps thinking 
how washed-out and shabby they are. 

So four years had gone by without 
Lassie coming home, and all that time 
she had been growing more away from 
the old home and less in sympathy with 
it, without at all realising the great gap 
that was opening between them, which 
might have become more gradually and 
less painfully apparent to her if she had 
gone home more frequently. 

Now it struck her with a blank feeling 


42 


LASSIE. 


of dismay as she went into the untidy, 
stuffy little kitchen, where Tim sat 
smoking over the fire with his hat on 
and looking dirty and unshaven, with a 
mug on the table at his side, which, as 
she entered, he tried ineffectually to 
push out of sight behind the Bible which 
a neighbour had fetched out and dusted, 
as an appropriate object in times of 
affliction, when the parson might be 
likely to call in. 

She did not need to be told the fact 
which more than one neighbour, with 
that curious anxiety to be the bearer of 
bad news, had called out to her as she 
came from the station and passed along 
the village street — a fact which the drawn 
blind in the bedroom window above con- 
firmed — that her mother was dead. 


CHAPTER IV. 


In most villages there is some place 
set apart by the unwritten law of custom 
for the discussion of public events. I 
do not mean such events as the fall of 
empires or the conquest of continents, 
or death-dealing famines or pestilence 
or earthquake. Things at a distance 
naturally look small even though in 
themselves gigantic, and are hardly 
visible to the naked eye from such a 
little village as Midgely, lying em- 
bowered in trees. There is hardly 
enough elevation anywhere to raise 
observers above the level of its black- 


44 


LASSIE. 


berry hedges, or fall enough to help the 
lazy little stream as it loiters along on 
its very leisurely journey to the sea ; so, 
as it has plenty of time, and no neces- 
sity to take short cuts, it meanders in 
big curves, fringed with rushes and 
meadow-sweet, through the pastures, 
and throws a shining silver arm adorned 
with broad green lily-leaves, turning up 
red facings when the wind ruffles them, 
nearly round the little village, which 
indeed tempted the embrace, so sweet 
and so demure did it look with its 
clustered, overhanging thatched roofs 
and windows peeping out of a tangle of 
roses. 

Village eyes are not provided with 
the powerful telescope of the public 
press, which brings all the ends of the 


LASSIE. 


45 


world so near to those in town, and 
makes events occurring in other hemis- 
pheres almost too appallingly near and 
real to us. London papers were few 
and far between at Midgely, and in the 
Yokelburn Gazette , which the carrier 
brought every Saturday for Mrs. Mug- 
gridge at the ? Jolly Farmer/ there was 
more interesting local news, such as a 
rick on fire in the next village; or boys 
had np before the magistrate for steal- 
ing apples from orchards not unknown 
to Midgely boys; or men convicted of 
trespassing after game or driving with- 
out reins or being drunk and disorderly 
on market-days — offences against the 
law to which many Midgely consciences 
pleaded guilty. This consciousness gave 
a zest to the recital spelt out with some 


46 


LASSIE. 


difficulty by the best scholar in the bar 
of the ‘ Jolly Farmer/ and obscured as 
the week passed on by rings of beer- 
inugs set down on it, while the page re- 
cording the latest news from the seat of 
war or decisive victory, remained un- 
stained and unstudied. 

The place of discussion at Midgely 
was the bridge which spanned what 
might be called the elbow of the encir- 
cling arm of the stream at one end of 
the village street. It was well adapted 
for the purpose, as there was a low wall 
on which any one could sit and swing 
his legs reflectively, or over which he 
could lean and watch the shoals of min- 
nows flitting past in the shallow water, 
or the weed waving gently in the slug- 
gish current, or the deposits of cabbage 


LASSIE. 


47 


leaves and rubbish that gradually col- 
lected against the pier of the bridge. 

It was handy, too, for the ‘ Jolly Far- 
mer,’ which was the last house by the 
bridge; and, as talking is dry work, 
Mrs. Muggridge got a good many extra 
customers when there was any special 
subject of interest under discussion, and 
could herself occasionally join in the 
talk over the white garden palings. On 
the other side of the street, over against 
the 6 Jolly Farmer,’ was the blacksmith’s 
forge, and Joe Luckett’s stentorian voice 
would sometimes make itself heard in 
between the blows of the hammer on 
the anvil, or while he held the great, 
hairy foot of a cart-horse under his arm 
ready for the adjustment of a shoe. 

Old Tim Wingate was very often to 


48 


LASSIE. 


be found on the bridge. It was a nice, 
easy distance from his cottage, even for 
a lame leg, for the Wingates* cottage 
stood about half-way along the village 
street, lying back from the road with a 
big cherry-tree in front of the door, and 
a gay border of flowers on either side of 
the brick path up from the wicket- 
gate. 

There was a certain part of the bridge 
where one of the coping bricks had been 
pushed off, offering a lower seat for any 
one not capable of hoisting himself up, 
and sitting with his feet swinging, and 
this was called ‘old Tim’s seat* for ever 
so long after the old man had disap- 
peared from the village conclave ; and if 
he was seen hobbling along the street, 
any one who was occupying it would 


LASSIE. 


49 


snuffle away as if it were the old man’s 
by right, though they generally waited 
till he was well past the ‘ Jolly Farmer ’ 
before they stirred, as there was a good 
chance of his never reaching the bridge 
after all. 

Of course the afternoon of the day of 
his wife’s funeral, etiquette (of which 
there is almost more in a village than in 
fashionable society) forbade Tim’s appear- 
ance on the bridge, still more at the 
‘ Jolly Farmer.’ More than once he 
thought longingly of the sympathy that 
he would have received at either of those 
places, and of the respect that would 
have been paid to his experiences as 
chief mourner and newly-made widower, 
as he sat in the oppressive neatness 
and quiet of his cottage, with Lassie 


4 


50 


LASSIE. 


opposite to him writing a letter at 
the table. 

There was not even the solace of 
wearing his old, battered wide-awake 
hat, which he had worn morning, noon, 
and night, indoors and out — and, some 
people even maintained, in bed — for a 
period beyond the memory of mortal 
man ; and he was desperately afraid that 
Lassie had thrown it out on the dust- 
heap when she provided the tall hat 
with the deep crape band on it which 
was so impressive at the funeral, but 
hardly suited for fireside wear. Lassie 
had brought him his pipe, to be sure; 
but it gave him the first bona fide pang 
of regret for his lost wife, that the 
tobacco had been forgotten, and he 
was afraid to disturb his daughter, so 


LASSIE. 


51 


absorbed was she in the letter she 
was writing. 

They say that people’s ears burn when 
their owners are being talked about, so 
that afternoon Lassie’s ears should have 
been red-hot under the dark hair that, 
brush it as smooth as she would, still let 
a soft ring escape sometimes on her 
broad forehead or white neck, and that 
felt strange and out of order without 
the hospital-cap which she put up her 
hand involuntarily to adjust. Tim’s ears 
should also have felt the glow under the 
spotted red handkerchief which, when 
Lassie was not looking, he put over his 
head in place of the lamented old hat 
on the dust-heap. For, down on the 
bridge, there was quite a gathering of 
Midgely folk debating as to what would 


52 


LASSIE. 


happen at the Wingates’ now the old 
missus was gone, and whether Lassie 
would bide at home and look after the 
old man, or whether she would go back 
to her nursing and let her father go into 
the workhouse infirmary. 

‘Well, ’t will be a burning shame if her 
lets her father go to the house when 
he ’ve slaved all the best years of his 
life to put bread in her mouth and 
clothes on her back!’ It w T as Farmer 
Elliot’s carter who gave vent to this 
remark, strengthened with one or two 
expletives which I omit as they are 
immaterial to this story or to anything 
else. He was a little, sandy man, 
with a dazzled look in his pale-blue 
eyes, as if he were always in the sun ; 
and, as is often the case with small, 


LASSIE. 


53 


mild-looking men, had unexpectedly 
strong opinions, and expressed them 
forcibly when out of earshot of e the 
missus/ in whose presence he might 
hardly call his soul his own. 

He had brought one of the . cart- 
horses to have a shoe put on, an op- 
eration that generally took the whole 
afternoon, as Farmer Elliot knew to 
his cost and Mrs. Muggridge to her 
profit. 

His remark was answered by a derisive 
‘ Haw ! haw ! haw ! ’ from the blacksmith, 
holding the hammer suspended above 
the glowing, transparent-looking bit of 
metal on the anvil. ‘ First time I ever 
heard of old Tim Wingate slaving. I ’d 
give up a good day’s work — that I 
would — to see the old chap doing a 


54 


LASSIE. 


stroke of anything. But, all the same, 
his gal did ought to stick to un ; and if 
she bides, I ’m thinking as he won’t be 
wanting that bit of ’lotment next to 
mine — the best bit of the lot, to my 
mind — and I don’t care if I take it 
over. It could stand in his name all the 
same, so there would n’t be no bother 
with the Squire as to my having more 
than my share. His gal don’t look the 
sort to hoe and weed and work about, 
same as the old woman did, and it ain’t 
likely as Tim will trouble liisself — it 
ain’t his natur’.’ 

6 And there ’s the washing as Mrs. 
Wingate done,’ a slatternly woman said, 
who had just joined the group at the 
bridge, pushing a lob-sided perambula- 
tor containing a sack of potatoes and a 


LASSIE. 


fat, dirty baby amusing itself with a 
large, black-handled dinner-knife. ‘ It 
ain’t to be supposed as Lassie ’ll stand 
at the wash-tub early and late as her 
mother did, doing other folks’ washing, 
even if she does her own ; and though 
she do dress so plain outside, you never 
see such frills and tucks and all sorts a§ 
she ’ve got on her under-things, for I see 
’em on the table when I step in the first 
evening she come home. I would n’t 
mind taking the washing over myself, 
as I could manage it easy in with mine. 
I always says it don’t make much odds 
if you have much or little to wash ; and 
it would bring in a som ’at to help along, 
as would n’t come amiss these days, what 
with the boys wearing out such a lot of 
shoe-leather, and thin ’ — this in a lower 


56 


LASSIE. 


voice lest Mrs. Muggridge, just inside 
her garden palings, should overhear — 

4 a husband always at the public.’ 

‘ Why, we should n’t know ourselves 
without the old gentleman,’ Mrs. Mug- 
gridge declared, leaning her elbows on 
the fence for a comfortable gossip. ‘ I 
won’t go for to deny as he is a bit over- 
took at times — and I’m the last one to 
encourage such ways, as have always 
kep’ my house respectable and quiet. 
But there! folks makes him out a deal 
worse than he is. It ain’t often as he ’s 
the worse, and I reckon I’m as likely 
to know the rights of it if any one does ; 
and he ’ve had a lot of trouble ’long of 
his leg, and that pig of his dying just 
before Michaelmas rent-day, and now 
it ’s his old missus. I always says, 


LASSIE. 


57 


“ Wait till we ’re tried afore we ’re so 
hard on other people when they wants a 
drop of comfort;” and Lassie did ought 
to make a comfortable home for him.’ 

4 And it would be just going agin her 
mother’s last dying words/ Mrs. Jones, 
the post-mistress, added. From the bridge 
you can command a full view of the post- 
office door, so Mrs. Jones could safely 
leave her official duties for a few minutes 
to join the conclave. ‘ “ Send for Lassie ” 
was what the poor dear said just before 
she was took, and it were n’t for her own 
sake as she said it, for she knew very well 
as she were n’t long for this world, for 
she says to me that very morning — or 
it might ’a’ been the day before — “ Mrs. 
Jones,” she says, “ I ’m never going to 
get off this bed no more and I could n’t 


58 


LASSIE. 


go for to contradick the poor soul, seeing 
death as plain as plain in her face. So 
it shows as she wanted the gal sent for 
to look after the old man ; and if I 
were in her place I could n’t, were it 
ever so, give the go-by to a mother’s 
words ; though there ain’t that feeling 
about dooty to parents as there did used 
to be, and as the Scripture says, “ Train 
up a child and away they go,” as was n’t 
the way in my time. Lassie used to 
be a terrible good needle-woman, and 
me and Liza ’s been thinking if between 
’em they might n’t do a bit of dress- 
making, for Liza ’s a good eye for 
cuttin’ and fittiiT, though her back ain’t 
strong enough to sit long at her needle. 
There might be a card in my winder, 
and my best parlour ’d be handy if 


LASSIE. 


59 


ladies came in from the country round 
to be fitted.’ 

‘ There! ain’t that just like mother?’ 
Liza interrupted, with a toss of a much- 
frizzjed head. ‘ Any one might think it 
was all settled. I ’ve got to make up 
my mind first, and I ’m not sure as 
Lassie Wingate ’s quite my style. It 
wants some one a bit stylish for the 
dressmaking, and I never see any- 
thing so dowdy as that black she 
wears.’ 

She gave a coquettish look at Joe 
Muggridge, who had just come out of 
the 1 Jolly Farmer ’ with a handsaw to 
grind on the stone outside the smithy. 
Joe was Mrs. Muggridge’s only son, and 
in his opinion, and in that of his mother’s, 
and of most of the Midgely girls, he was 


60 


LASSIE. 


a very smart young fellow, and one 
whose notice would confer infinite dis- 
tinction on any girl to whom he con- 
descended to drop the handkerchief. 

But Liza Jones, who flattered her- 
self she was ahead of all the other girls 
in his good graces, met no responsive 
glance this afternoon ; for in days gone 
by, when they were at school together, 
Joe had cherished a sheepish admiration 
for Lassie, and all the other girls in the 
place had made themselves so exceed- 
ingly cheap that there was a sort of 
attraction in one who did not turn to 
look after him when he swaggered by, 
or do more than briefly reply to his 
‘ Good-morning 1 when he met her in the 
street. I suppose it was something of 
the same feeling that made Alexander 


LASSIE. 


61 


cry for new worlds to conquer, for 
neither to Alexander or Joe Muggridge 
did it occur that there was any doubt 
about the conquering; for Joe had no 
fear but that Lassie would be as flattered 
by his attentions as any other girl, for 
he was serenely confident that there was 
not any other young man in or near 
Midgely worth looking at — and, for 
the matter of that, not many in London ; 
‘ leastways/ he told himself, with be- 
coming modesty, ‘ as she ’s likely to 
have come across in that old hospital 
place.’ 

So he too was of opinion that Lassie’s 
right place was at home, and he was 
expressing it in a somewhat raised voice 
to be heard above the whirr of the steel 
on the grindstone, when the vicar 


62 


LASSIE. 


passed over the bridge on the way to 
the vicarage, which lies at the other end 
of the village, near the church. He 
was a new vicar, who had succeeded 
the kind old man who had prepared 
Lassie for confirmation and patted Liza’s 
offended ear, and he had a young wife 
who had been greatly attracted by the 
look of Lassie as she stood by her 
mother’s grave that morning. 

6 All the village is talking of Lassie 
Wingate, and whether she will go back 
to London or stop with her father,’ he 
told his wife as they sat over their 
tea. 

‘ It ’s plainly her duty to remain at 
home,’ Mrs. Bruce said decidedly. How 
wonderfully plain other people’s duties 
are to all of us ! ‘ Poor old man ! it 


LASSIE. 


63 


would be hard if his only child deserted 
him ; and he looked so broken-hearted at 
the funeral. And besides, she would be 
so useful in the place. I think I shall 
get her to speak a few words about nurs- 
ing at the mothers’ meeting, and show 
the women a few simple things, such as 
bandaging and making poultices. And 
she would help a little if any one was ill. 
Only think how glad we should have 
been of her last year when the influenza 
was so bad ! Oh, it’s clearly her duty 
to stop.’ 

‘ If he had any other children,’ agreed 
the vicar, ‘ it might be different. The 
old man w T ants looking after. He had 
evidently been taking a drop too much 
last night when I met him. She would 
be such a good influence in the place, 


64 


LASSIE. 


too ! She seems a very steady, superior 
young person. You might get her to 
help you with your friendly girls, my 
dear. And there ’s the Sunday-school ; 
we badly want teachers for the elder 
girls/ 

It was very curious how in every case, 
even at the vicarage, some side-issues 
crept in to influence the general opinion 
of what Lassie’s clear duty was. 


CHAPTER V. 


And meanwhile Lassie had already 
made up her mind on the debated point, 
and was even now writing to the matron 
at St. Barnabas to resign her place as 
nurse. She was glad that the red 
pocket-handkerchief over her father’s 
head prevented him seeing the moisture 
that gathered on her lashes as she wrote 
that letter, and the one to the War Office 
withdrawing her name from the number 
of volunteers for the war nursing ; and 
she was obliged to leave her letter to 
Alice Nugent to finish when Tim had 
gone to bed, as the tears blinded her 


5 


66 


LASSIE. 


eyes more than once, and she could not 
stifle a sob, which made an observant eye 
appear from under the red handkerchief. 

She had not cried at all at the funeral, 
as critical eyes had noticed ; she had not 
even kept her handkerchief to her face, 
as is the usual etiquette at country fu- 
nerals ; and the neighbours commented 
on such a want of proper feeling, and 
told how differently this one and the 
other had behaved — how ‘ Mary Jane, 
when her granny was took, had ’stericks 
terrible, so as they could hardly bring 
her to ; * and ‘ Harriet took on ever so 
when her baby brother died, though she 
were n't partial to children, and could n’t 
a-bear the sight of him when he were 
alive ; but she had such a feeling ’eart, 
poor thing ! ' 


LASSIE. 


67 


But they might not have thought 
Lassie so hard-hearted if they could 
have seen her the night before as she 
sat in the little bedroom where she had 
slept as a child, leading out of the 
bigger room into which the stairs led 
where the old mother lay now for the 
last time. 

It was so still that Tim’s snores were 
distinctly audible from the bed made up 
for him in the kitchen below, and the 
chirruping of the cricket on the hearth. 
Outside the house was the sweet country 
silence, so noticeable to an ear accus- 
tomed to the great, awful roar of the 
London streets, a silence only accentu- 
ated by the tap of a rose-branch against 
the window, or a little sigh of wind in 
the chimney ; and in the next room 


68 


LASSIE. 


reigned the mysterious, solemn silence 
of death, that seems more than the 
mere absence of sound, but something 
tangible and positive like the Egyptian 
darkness that could be felt. 

She had brought out her little writing- 
case to write to St. Barnabas to say she 
should return to her duties without fail 
on Saturday, and as she opened it and 
took out the pen, a little, shy smile 
touched the corners of her mouth, and 
brightened the eyes under the lashes 
where the tears had gathered as she 
passed through the outer room. The 
pen had been given her the other day 
by a friend at St. Barnabas, who had 
said, 1 You must use it to write to me 
when you are in Africa ; ’ and she put 
it aside and chose another for her letter 


LASSIE. 


69 


to the matron. She was sitting by the 
little window, over whose diamond panes 
the thatch frowned like a heavy eyebrow, 
and she drew back the patchwork cur- 
tain to look out into the darkness, while 
her thoughts were full of the giver of 
the pen. But the touch of the patch- 
work brought her mind back suddenly 
and filled her eyes with a rush of tears, 
so suggestive was it of the mother and 
the old, homely ways ; the constant 
little unconsidered acts of kindness and 
unselfishness; the small daily sacrifices 
of self done without the slightest feel- 
ing of heroism, hardly consciously, and 
without any elegance or idea of effect; 
and of the never-ending patience she 
showed to Tim, who even in those 
three days during wdiich Lassie had 


70 


LASSIE. 


been at home had tried her patience 
sorely. 

‘ Poor mother ! she must have had 
a lot to put up with.’ 

And then she set herself seriously to 
consider the future and decide what 
would be best to do about her father 
while she was away. Of course it was too 
late to make any alterations in her own 
plans. She was pledged — she had sent 
in her papers volunteering for the war 
nursing ; she had no right to turn back, 
having once put her hand to the plough. 
And the call had been so clear and plain ; 
it was no hasty resolve, no whim or self- 
will. Alice had felt just the same, and 
she was not impulsive or easily carried 
away by the excitement of the moment. 
If this had happened before it was all 


LASSIE. 


71 


settled it might have been different, 
though she told herself that it would 
have just broken her heart to have 
given up her dearly-loved work — all 
that made life bright and interesting 
— to take up a very doubtful and un- 
pleasant duty in a mean little gossiping 
place among narrow interests and limited 
minds. She tried to occupy her mind 
with plans for her father’s comfort, tell- 
ing herself how, when she came back, she 
would often be able to run down and see 
after him ; endeavouring all the time to 
turn a deaf ear to a text that kept recur- 
ring again and again with vexatious ap- 
propriateness : ‘ If a man shall say to his 
father or mother, It is Corban, that is 
to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou might- 
est be profited by me ; he shall be free. 


72 


LASSIE. 


. . . Making the word of God of none 
effect through your tradition.’ 

The light from the little window 
under the thatch in the Wingates’ 
cottage twinkled out long after the 
other lights in Midgely were extin- 
guished ; and the old patchwork curtain, 
with its faded lilacs and browns and 
rows of uneven sewing, was wet with 
many tears before Lassie had come to 
the end of her self-communing, and 
before she got up and went into the 
next room to kneel for a few minutes 
by the closed coffin. 

‘ Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’ 
Sometimes the word comes by the voice 
of the preacher in the great Abbey, and 
sometimes by the mother’s voice on a 
dying-bed : ‘ Send for Lassie.’ 


LASSIE. 


73 


‘ Do this, and he doeth it.’ 

And so that letter of Lassie’s announc- 
ing her return to the matron was never 
written, and the pen that had been 
given to write interesting details from 
the seat of war was dropped in the bed- 
room, and trampled out of all possible 
use by the clumsy feet of the bearers as 
they carried the coffin down ; and in- 
stead, she wrote to resign her post at 
St. Barnabas, and to withdraw her 
name from the list of volunteers for 
nursing abroad. 

But, once having made up her mind, 
she set about her life at home with 
plenty of pluck and spirit, being of too 
wholesome a nature not to do with all 
her might whatever her hand found to 
do. 


74 


LASSIE. 


And in those early days in the pleas- 
ant, bright autumn weather — with Tim 
on his very best behaviour, and all the 
neighbours beaming approval and in- 
clined to be friendly and helpful ; and 
Mrs. Bruce, the vicar’s wife, making 
much of her and seeking her company ; 
and Mrs. Jones quite motherly and 
confidential ; and Joe Muggridge bring- 
ing papers with the latest news from 
Africa, and executing commissions for 
her on market-days — altogether Lassie 
did not find the change as bad as she 
expected. ‘They are all so kind and 
good-natured,’ she said. And though 
she had learnt discretion with greater 
knowledge, and did not try to force 
her opinions red-hot down every one’s 
throat, she felt that, in return for their 


LASSIE. 


75 


kindness, she might be of some use in 
Midgely, where nursing and sanitary 
matters were in a most elementary 
condition. 

‘So, if I am not to nurse the soldiers, 
I may find something to do here/ she 
told herself hopefully ; ‘ so my training 
will come in handy after all, and this is 
the work I ’m meant to do.' 

She began her reforms at home, and 
rather took old Tim’s breath away by 
some of her arrangements. 

Tim had quite made up his mind that 
she meant to go back to St. Barnabas, 
and at the bottom of his heart hoped 
she would, though he had prepared 
stores of eloquence to be expended on 
ungrateful and undutiful children. He 
always had some grievance on hand — 


76 


LASSIE. 


the weather, or his leg, or the potato 
disease, or the pig, and of late, of 
course, his wife’s illness and death. He 
had rather pictured to himself, being 
established with this inspiring griev- 
ance, to lodge with some one in the 
village, Lassie, of course, liberally con- 
tributing to his support to help out the 
small pension left him by a former 
mistress. There was an old Mrs. Sims, 
a few doors up the street, where he 
thought he might be fairly comfortable. 
She liked a glass herself, so she would 
not be down on any one as the missus, 
poor soul, used to be. Worst come to 
worst, he might go into the infirmary, 
where an old crony of his was estab- 
lished and reported it ‘ pretty middlin’, ’ 
but his leg was only very bad when he 


LASSIE. 


77 


had nothing else to complain of ; and 
he thought if he lodged with Mrs. Sims 
he might make shift to do a bit of hoe- 
ing or tidy up any one’s garden, an 
effort that had not occurred to his mind 
of late years. 

To any one of Tim’s disposition it was 
quite a trial to be suddenly deprived of 
a full-flavoured grievance such as Lassie’s 
desertion of him would have been, and 
for every one to be telling him what a 
fine thing it was for him to have his 
daughter at home ; so it was only nat- 
ural that he should recur to one of his 
old grumbles and suffer excruciating 
pain in his leg. But even that was 
spoilt by the neighbours thinking him 
lucky for having a ‘ gal as understands 
them things, and can do it every bit as 


78 


LASSIE. 


well as a doctor, and not charge noth- 
ing.’ And who was to explain that that 
was just the worst of it, and that Lassie 
knew about ‘ them things ’ too well to 
believe in all the agonising sufferings he 
described, or to credit sudden accesses 
of pain and lameness which came on, 
curiously, when the parson or the 
Squire’s lady happened to be passing ? 

‘ 1 ’ve nothing to say agin her,’ Tim 
would begin querulously when — and it 
was not very often now — he joined the 
party in the bar of the ‘Jolly Farmer.’ 
People always begin like that when they 
are going to say a good deal against 
some one. ‘ I ’ve nothing to say agin 
her — ne’er a word ! And I ain’t one as 
would shut my door on a child of mine, 
however undootiful and wrong-headed 


LASSIE. 


79 


they may be. As long as I ’ve a roof 
over my head and a crust to eat, why, 
there ! she ’s welcome to a share of it. 
And I don’t blame the girl, mind ye, for 
getting sick of that hospital work, where, 
as I ’m told, they’ve a terrible hard time 
of it ; and it’s only in natur’ as she’d 
rather bide at home and take her ease 
where she ain’t nothing to do. But I 
tells her plainly as I won’t stand her 
masterful ways, nor her new-fangled 
notions neither. I never heard such a 
clutter about washing as she keeps up ! 
I dare say it ’s all very well for they 
dirty folk up in London what she’ve 
been used to. I ’ll not go for to say as 
they may n’t want it. But for decent, 
or’nary folk like us, we don’t want 
always to be messing about with water ; 


so 


LASSIE. 


and as to a grown man, well in years too, 
washing all over just like a babby, why, 
it’s agin natur’, and I never heard tell 
of such a thing ! And, my word ! the 
fuss she made over my flannel shirt! 
I’d a bit of a cold, ye see, and I ’d been 
waiting till the wind went round a bit 
before I changed it, as nothing’s so 
likely to chill a man as putting on a 
clean shirt. Well, you’ll mind as the 
wind stuck in the east for a goodish bit, 
so I just bided the Almighty’s time and 
were n’t in no hurry. But she were in a 
taking and no mistake, and said she ’d 
a mind to burn it when it came off. And 
she ’ve stripped off all them bits of paper 
what I and the missus pasted round the 
windows to keep out the draught ; and 
hail, rain, or snow, there’s them win- 


LASSIE. 


81 


dows open. And she took down the 
sack of shavings out of the bedroom 
chimney, and won’t have none of it, 
though it were her own mother as put 
it there, and the draught is just fit to 
blow any one’s head off. And then 
there ’s the sow ! I wonder she don’t 
have her to live indoors — that I do ! 
I tells her over and over as it’s 'the 
habits of the creature, and as they likes 
dirt and thrives on it ; but she ’s always 
arter me to clean the sty out, and says 
the smell ’s enough to pizen any one, 
though I tells her it ain’t nothing like 
as bad as that carbolic stuff she’s so 
terrible fond on. I ain’t no patience 
with such finnicking ways ! ’ 

To which complainings the neighbours 
paid little attention at first. 


6 


CHAPTER VI. 


Six months have passed since Mrs. 
Wingate died and Lassie came home to 
look after her father — six months full 
of stirring public events, history written 
in blood and fire and broken hearts, just 
as much as that history in old times was 
written which we take down from our 
shelves and read so calmly to-day. But 
in Midgely time dawdles along as peace- 
fully as the sluggish little river, without 
any incidents to notch the stick and 
mark its passage ; and if a nation is 
happy which has no history, Midgely 
may be reckoned a place of perfect 


LASSIE. 


83 


felicity. The only thing that changes 
there is opinion, and that so gradually 
that the people are quite unaware of it 
themselves ; and I think if at the end 
of those six months you listened to the 
talk on the bridge at Midgely, you 
would be quite surprised at the change 
that had come over people’s sentiments 
about Lassie Wingate, and would wonder 
if you had misunderstood the unanimous 
opinion in October, or had not heard 
aright. 

For in six months it had become 
obvious to most of the Midgely neigh- 
bours that Lassie had made a great 
mistake in coming home, and had much 
better have stayed away. 

They all of them declared they had 
seen it would not answer from the very 


84 


LASSIE. 


first, and called all sorts of people to 
witness that they had told them so, and 
that if folks had only listened to them 
at the time it would have been settled 
quite differently. 

Even at the vicarage, the vicar’s wife 
was not superior to the failings of her 
fellow-mortals, but appealed frequently 
to the memory of her husband, who 
could not exactly remember the fact that 
she had always feared Lassie’s return 
home would not do. And the vicar was 
not anxious to remind her of her san- 
guine expectations, as he wished to 
impress on himself and her that he 
always had misgivings on the subject. 
It is human nature to shrink from 
confessing one’s self wrong in one’s 
anticipations. 


LASSIE. 


85 


The intimacy between Mrs. Bruce and 
Lassie had rather languished of late. 
Mrs. Bruce complained that Lassie was 
disappointing on nearer acquaintance. 
Perhaps it was that the girl was a little 
independent and disinclined to follow as 
meekly in Mrs. Bruce’s path as that lady 
expected from a young person in her 
position. That idea of teaching the 
mothers’ meeting a few simple rules of 
nursing very soon collapsed, as did also 
the intention of calling in Lassie’s aid in 
cases of sickness. There were certain 
old-established, ignorant methods of 
treatment in Midgely, and certain 
nearly as long-established and quite as 
ignorant old women who presided over 
the sick and dying in the village ; and 
whether it was that the Midgely con- 


86 


LASSIE. 


stitutions were of a tougher kind than 
others, or whether modern science and 
laws of hygiene are not as infallible as 
people would have you think, certain it 
is that the Midgely people did not all 
die of typhoid, and recovered from vari- 
ous illnesses, such as ‘ pomonia/ ‘ brown- 
typus/ or ‘ indigestion of the lungs/ by 
the use or in spite of remedies quite un- 
known to the British Pharmacopoeia. ' 
Babies who were born with a longing 
for some particular article of food, such 
as raspberry-jam, spring onions, or red 
herrings, were indulged at the very 
earliest period of their young lives with 
such luxuries as they desired, and 
sucked down the unusual food as sweet 
as a nut, and ‘ was n’t the same child 
afterwards, bless her ! ’ Children who 


LASSIE. 


87 


seemed sure to go off in a ‘ gallopading ’ 
consumption were restored to robust 
health by the application of snails down 
‘ the spine of the back ’ or a decoction 
of field mice ; and a little boy with peri- 
tonitis, who fancied some marmalade, 
was at once supplied with a pot of 
Keiller and lived to tell the tale. 

So also for most grown-up ailments 
brandy or port-wine were the infallible 
cure, and Lassie's very outspoken dis- 
belief in their universal efficacy put her 
out of court at once with half of the 
Midgely people, who returned with re- 
newed confidence to old Mrs. Murphy ; 
who, after listening to the description of 
various aches and pains and curious 
symptoms, such as being ‘all of a 
tremble in the innerds ’ or feeling ‘all 


88 


LASSIE. 


upside down, anyhow,’ would gravely 
suggest, as if it were a remedy of an 
original character that had only just 
occurred to her mind : ‘ Now, if you 
takes my advice, Betsy Ann, you ’ll just 
take a teaspoonful of brandy when you 
feels like that. No, I knows as it ain’t 
to your liking, but you did oughter 
think of your pore ’usban’ and all them 
blessed little steps of children.’ Or it 
might be : ‘ Now, I wonders how a drop 
of that port-wine would do, same as 
Squire’s housekeeper give to Joe Norris 
when he was dying. ’T were rare good 
stuff, for I just had the leastest little 
taste of it, as it were n’t a bit of good 
giving it to him, poor chap, as were too 
far gone to know what he swallered.’ 

Neither did Mrs. Jones’s little plan 


LASSIE. 


89 


for Liza and Lassie to combine in a 
dressmaking venture, with Lassie to do 
all the work and Liza to look on and 
reap the benefit, come to anything, for 
the two girls did not take to one 
another. Perhaps Joe Muggridge was 
partly accountable for the failure of this 
arrangement, for he had received such a 
severe snubbing for certain loutish over- 
tures to Lassie as made his self-conceit 
smart for many a day ; and that is the 
most painful part to have a wound in, 
though it does not go very deep and 
never proves fatal. 

‘ A nasty, stuck-up thing,’ Liza said, 
‘ giving herself such airs, as if there was 
any harm in a bit of fun! Joe Mug- 
gridge took the length of her foot from 
the first, but I couldn’t believe it of her 


90 


LASSIE. 


till I see it with my own eyes. Joe says 
she was a girl he never could abide, and 
most of the young men’s of the same 
opinion, seemings, and I ain’t surprised. 
Why, just see how she looked when I 
asked her to come to fair with me, and 
said as there was a deal of fun in the 
evening, and kiss-in-the-ring, and I ’d 
see as she wasn’t left out of it. My 
gracious ! she nearly snapped my head 
off. She need n’t have troubled her- 
self ; I don’t think one of the Midgely 
lads would have cared to kiss such a 
sour-faced old maid.’ 

‘ Not they !’ said the admiring mother ; 
‘ they ’ve better taste — trust ’em ! ’ 

1 Oh, I know what you mean,’ said 
Liza, bridling, and frisking her fringe 
into more becoming frizziness ; ‘ but it 


LASSIE. 


91 


ain’t my fault if all the men comes after 
me. It ’s not for any asking of mine.’ 

‘ No, sure ! ’ said Mrs. Jones; ‘ they ’ve 
eyes in their heads, bless you ! But 
you’ll have to mind what you’re about. 
Joe’ll have a word to say about it, I ’m 
thinking.’ 

Mrs. Muggridge was at first a little 
relieved at Joe’s change of sentiment 
as regards Lassie — as what mother 
ever thought any one good enough for 
her only son ? But her satisfaction was 
mitigated by his conspicuous attentions 
to Liza Jones ( ‘ A little, empty-headed 
minx ! 9 ) — attentions which Joe fondly 
hoped would be the surest way to re- 
venge himself on Lassie, but which she 
took with the greatest equanimity, if 
indeed she noticed them at all. 


92 


LASSIE. 


The hostess of the ‘Jolly Farmer ’ did 
not find Tim such a good customer as in 
former days, when the purse-strings were 
held by more lenient old hands. 

‘ Why, you ’re quite a stranger, master,’ 
she would say to him ; and such very 
occasional half-pints hardly made it worth 
her while to listen to his long-winded 
complaints, especially if a more lucrative 
customer claimed her attention. 

Neither did the blacksmith get that 
patch of the allotment which was as 
Naboth’s vineyard to him ; for though, 
as he rightly opined, Lassie was not 
the sort to hoe and weed as her 
mother had done with her own hands, 
still she got the work done somehow, 
partly by Tim’s unwilling and inter- 
mittent labours, and partly by a half- 


LASSIE. 


93 


witted lad whom she had protected 
against his persecutors, the village 
boys, and who accordingly had taken 
a sort of dog-like fancy to her. 

Nor did Mrs. Hicks get the washing 
which she thought would go begging 
now Mrs. Wingate was gone, for Las- 
sie found that her savings were melt- 
ing away in eking out her father’s 
pension, and that it was necessary she 
should do something to bring in a lit- 
tle money as her mother did. ‘And 
a poor business she makes of it, 
too ! ’ her employers said, having grum- 
bled equally in Mrs. Wingate’s time. 
‘ There ’s a shirt for you ! The old 
lady, anyhow, washed clean, though 
she didn’t get the things up much to 
speak of.’ 


94 


LASSIE. 


As to the good example she was to 
be in the place, over that, too, the 
vicar shook his head in disappoint- 
ment. Somehow she seemed to be on 
a different level to the rest of the 
people ; and so, because she did cer- 
tain things, it seemed no manner of 
reason why others should do the same. 
Her regular church-going produced no 
more effect on the neighbours than the 
vicar’s attendance himself or the clerk’s. 
Her simple, rather severe, plainness of 
dress did not shame one poppy or 
nodding plume out of Matilda’s hat, 
or abate one curl or frizzle of Liza’s 
exuberant fringe. 

Because she sat at work in the 
evening under the big cherry-tree or 
by the hearth was no reason why the 


LASSIE. 


95 


Midgely girls should not lark about 
the lanes with the boys, or stand gos- 
siping on the bridge ; and her calm 
indifference to the heavy, coarse chaff 
of the hobbledehoys outside the ‘ Jolly 
Farmer’ as she passed did not hinder 
other girls from bridling and colour- 
ing and answering back. 

An example should not be too far 
above our heads, I was going to say, 
forgetting for the moment the great 
Example infinitely above the best of 
us ; but there His infinite love brings 
Him near to the least, and while He 
is highly exalted, He is yet the Friend 
of publicans and sinners. 

Even to herself Lassie was sometimes 
fain to confess that she had made a mis- 
take, and that her sacrifice was thrown 


96 


LASSIE. 


away (as if a sacrifice ever were !), 
though she was not one of those intro- 
spective self-torturers who enfeeble the 
present with vain laments over the 
past. 

She was tingling to the finger-tips 
with the feeling of the ability and with 
the wish to help these neighbours who 
rejected her help. She felt her isolation, 
and sometimes, sitting alone over her 
work and hearing the gay voices and 
laughter from the village street, she 
would have been glad to throw it down 
and join in some of the fun, though the 
next minute the horse-play and romp- 
ing revolted her. With her father she 
felt unceasingly she was a failure ( ‘After 
all, I can’t manage him as mother did ! ’) , 
not realising that that management con- 


LASSIE. 


97 


sisted merely in constant failures and 
constant beginning again, that patient, 
untiring love that is like the beautiful 
affection of a dog, never asking ‘How 
oft ? * but going on to the seventy times 
seven. 

‘ I can’t even keep him clean,’ she 
used to say to herself bitterly ; ‘ and the 
house doesn’t look half as nice as it 
used in mother’s time.’ 

Mrs. Muggridge could have testified 
that Tim’s visits to her were not so fre- 
quent, but to Lassie the shame and vex- 
ation of his coming home stupid and 
fuddled lasted long after Tim had for- 
gotten such an insignificant occurrence ; 
and she did not realise how, in those old 
days that seemed so much better, her 
mother had kept such back-slidings out 


7 


98 


LASSIE. 


of sight, got him quietly to bed, or in- 
vented an errand for the clear-sighted 
young daughter to get her out of the 
way. 

‘And he doesn’t even like me,’ she 
would sigh ; ‘ he is quite glad to get out 
of my way, and I heard him tell Mrs. 
Martin that it was n’t a bit like home.’ 

At first her hopeful young nature 
shook off these discouragements, and she 
would tell herself that it would all come 
right in time and that better days were 
in store ; but after a certain Sunday, of 
which I will tell in the next chapter, she 
left off looking hopefully into a future 
that was no longer lighted by the rays 
that had made rainbows on her tears 
when her mother died. 


CHAPTER VII. 


It was one Sunday at the end of 
June, a beautiful, bright day with the 
roses blooming in royal abundance in 
all the gardens, and the tall, white lilies 
beginning to open their waxen flowers 
in stately purity. The air was full of 
the sweet odours of new-cut hay and 
honeysuckle and lime blossoms — a very 
ideal day for a bicycle ride away, away 
from London, with its noise and hurry 
and exhausted air and stale smells, right 
away into the very heart of the country, 
through pine-woods with their rich, 
resinous fragrance, and with shafts of 
L.ofC. 


100 


LASSIE. 


sunlight striking between the red trunks 
on to the vivid green bracken below. 
Passing out of the cool silence of the 
pine-woods, the way leads through leafy 
country lanes with meadows on either 
side rippling with the long grass, the 
green shot with the brown of ripe seeds 
and the red of sorrel tops, or the same 
lying in fragrant swathes where the 
machine — no longer, alas ! the scythe 
— had left it the day before, ready to 
be tossed or turned on Monday by that 
heap of prongs and wooden rakes in the 
corner. 

Now and again comes a wheat-field, 
unbelievably, vividly green in the sun- 
shine, with streaks of red poppies auda- 
ciously gay. It is quite a relief to the 
eye after such brilliance to turn to the 


LASSIE. 


101 


wayside elms with their sober summer 
green, and the sycamores with their 
pink-tinted clusters of tassels, and the t 
limes whose dainty green blossoms are 
spreading their honey sweetness far 
and wide to summon the bees to their 
feast. 

The broad patches of shadow cast by 
the trees on the road are very welcome 
after a stretch of June sunshine. The 
cuckoo still calls its spring message, 
though it is beginning that hiccupping 
which is, I suppose, that ‘ change of 
tune ’ tradition tells us comes to his note 
in June, before July comes, when ‘ Away 
I fly/ Thrushes and blackbirds sing fit- 
fully, for the cherries are getting ripe 
and they are busy. The ringdoves purr 
in the midsummer warmth with a drowsy 


102 


LASSIE. 


sweetness that invites any one who is 
hot and has left forty miles of road 
behind him to dismount and rest on 
that grassy bank under the big beech- 
tree, where the prickly little nuts are 
showing themselves, though the lark 
rising from the wheat and poppies oppo- 
site and going up, up, up, singing as he 
goes, seems to preach untiring effort, 
untiring praise. 

But the rider is beguiled by the ring- 
doves to rest a bit before he enters 
the little village just in sight, with its 
thatched roofs and timbered, white- 
washed walls, clustering round the little, 
stumpy, towered church, from which the 
mellow old bells are inviting, rather 
jerkily, to afternoon service. 

Under one of those thatched roofs the 


LASSIE. 


103 


peace which the whole outward scene 
suggested did not reign. 

Old Tim had been unusually can- 
tankerous and perverse that day, and 
Lassie’s patience had given way, a thing 
that very rarely happened. It is un- 
fortunately true that on Sunday there 
seems more danger of friction than on 
other days; the day that above all 
others should be ‘so cool, so calm, so 
bright,’ is often the one when mental 
quiet is disturbed. 

Lassie had been to church in the 
morning, and during her absence Tim 
had annexed some pence she had put 
aside on the dresser to pay the baker 
the following day, and he had stoutly 
denied the fact when inquiry was 
made. 


104 


LASSIE. 


There had been mysterious disappear- 
ance of this sort on previous occasions,, 
which had been generally followed by 
visits to the ‘ Jolly Farmer ’ and the 
usual sequel, so perhaps Lassie may be 
pardoned for being a little irate at the 
thing happening again ; but she was 
ashamed, directly it was over, at the 
altercation that ensued in high-pitched 
tones, and of having put out her hand 
to stop him when he got up to slink out 
of the cottage, declaring he should not 
go till he had given back the money. 

It was only for a moment, and she 
let him push her arm away, though she 
could easily have prevented him, being 
tall and strong and active, while he 
was shrunken-up and feeble. He had 
knocked over a chair on the way to the 


LASSIE. 


105 


door, and a plate had fallen from the 
table and lay smashed on the bricks ; 
and Tim turned when he was outside in 
the garden and swore at her, and went 
hobbling down the path with his hat 
crushed in at one side, which might 
have been — but was not — the effect 
of a blow. 

Altogether, to any one passing in the 
road it would have given the effect of 
an angry quarrel — of a loud-tongued, 
scolding woman venting her rage in 
words, if not in blows, on an old and 
feeble man, whose age and infirmity 
should have been his protection. 

And such a passer-by there was ; and 
such, no doubt, was his interpretation 
of the scene, for Lassie could hear her 
fathers voice raised in querulous tones, 


106 


LASSIE. 


evidently laying his wrongs before some 
sympathising listener. 

But Lassie was too sick at heart and 
sorry to care what her father might be 
saying or to whom. She had covered 
lip her face, and stood leaning her 
shoulder against the doorpost, with her 
back turned to the road ; and she did not 
move when the garden gate opened, and 
steps sounded on the path behind her, 
till a voice said, 1 Does Nurse Wingate 
live here ? ’ 

Then she dropped her hands and gave 
a little exclamation of pleased surprise, 
that died away into embarrassed silence 
as she quickly drew back the welcoming 
hand she had involuntarily extended, 
and wrapped it in the dirty apron she 
had put on to wash up the dinner things. 


LASSIE. 


107 


Lassie’s hair was rough and disordered, 
and her face stained and flushed with 
her passionate tears. The room behind 
her looked squalid and untidy with the 
overturned chair and broken plate on 
the bricks, the dinner things heaped at 
the end of the table, and a cat taking 
advantage of the turmoil to snatch a 
hasty meal from the potato-dish. 

It was so very different from the 
Nurse Wingate Dr. Milton remembered 
when he was house-doctor at St. Barna- 
bas. Nurse Wingate was always ex- 
quisitely neat and trim, with an 
indescribable niceness and daintiness 
about her in all her ways and move- 
ments, which made it scarcely credible 
that she did not come of gentle parent- 
age — a fact, however, which she never 


108 


LASSIE. 


attempted to conceal, but of which, 
somehow, he had lost sight in his inter- 
course with her. 

He had been thinking a great deal of 
her lately, and he had come that June 
day to find her and tell her of the pros- 
pects opening before him, and of the 
practice he had secured in a country 
town in the west of England, and he 
w T as going to ask Lassie to share these 
bright prospects with him. 

Before he entered the village, as he 
sat listening to the doves, his thoughts 
were full of her. No girl had ever taken 
his fancy as she had ; and something 
deeper than his fancy, he told himself. 
What matter if her parentage were not 
exalted — if her people were farmers, or 
even respectable trades-people ? It did 


LASSIE. 


109 


not signify; Lassie in herself was a 
lady beyond dispute, and her new 
home would be miles away from 
Midgely. 

And then he went into the village 
and heard a noisy quarrel at a cottage 
door, where the smell of the pig-sty 
drowned the fragrance of the roses 
and honeysuckle, and a scolding virago 
of a woman was shouting at a blear- 
eyed old rustic, who, without any re- 
ticence, had opened his woes to this 
casual passer-by, and had finished by 
asking a trifle to drink his health. 

And then to find that this scolding 
virago was Lassie, the soft-voiced, mild- 
eyed nurse who was his ideal of gentle- 
ness and refinement, and of whom, not 
ten minutes ago, he had confidently 


110 


LASSIE. 


affirmed that she was a lady beyond all 
dispute ! 

I think Lassie read in his eyes that 
first moment the end of her little ro- 
mance — ‘ Finis ’ written very plainly — 
and she accepted it without any effort 
to set matters right or explain. She did 
not even put up her hand to arrange 
her hair, which is almost an involun- 
tary movement in a woman even in 
the most tragic circumstances. She did 
not take off her washing-up apron or 
turn down her sleeves ; far less did 
she pick up the overturned chair, or 
collect the broken pieces of the plate, 
or drive the cat from her surreptitious 
meal. 

If he had come half-an-hour later, 
and she had washed up the dinner 


LASSIE. 


Ill 


tilings, and was sitting, as she often 
did on Sunday afternoons, under the 
cherry-tree, as daintily neat and tidy as 
she ever had been in the hospital; if 
he had come in then and sat down by 
her, it would all have been different, 
as she had thought and dreamed and 
pictured it hundreds of times when 
work had been distasteful, or the pres- 
ent difficult, and she had wanted some- 
thing to help her through. 

The glimpse of the cottage room, he 
would then have had through the 
open door, would have been nice and 
pleasant and cheerful even if it were 
simple and homely. There w r ould have 
been a glass of roses on the dresser; 
she always put some fresh ones 
there on Sunday afternoon, and never 


112 


LASSIE. 


without a thought how he had once 
said she arranged flowers so tastefully. 
The hearth would have been swept up 
and the kettle on, and by-and-by she 
would have gone in and made some tea 
for him in those pretty cups she and 
Alice used for their tea, and she would 
have brought it out under the cherry- 
tree. She had pictured all these little 
details over and over again, but she 
had never thought of it like this. 

He was very kind. Yes, that was 
almost the worst of it ; he was so kind 
— just as he was to the ward-maids 
and scrubbers, or to the poorer 
patients. 

‘He is always kindest to the poorer 
ones,’ she had once said; and she re- 
membered that now he would be kind 


LASSIE. 


113 


even to the scolding daughter of a 
disreputable-looking old father. 

In the old days he had sometimes 
spoken curtly, almost roughly, to her, 
and she had liked it as coming from 
him, as showing a sense of equality and 
intimacy which makes ceremony un- 
necessary. There was none of that 
now. 

She could almost have recognised the 
change if she had not read it in his 
face ; the very tone of his voice told 
her he was not speaking to an equal. 

‘ What a pretty place Midgely is!’ he 
said. ‘ I had no idea the country was 
so pretty about here. It’s no won- 
der you forsook poor, smoky old St. 
Barnabas ! ’ 

She made some inarticulate answer, 


8 


114 


LASSIE. 


and he went on : ‘ You are looking very 
well. Country life suits you.’ 

And then he gave a little, unconscious 
sniff, and Lassie remembered that her 
father had not cleaned out the pig-sty 
yesterday; though she was so used to 
such omissions by this time that she 
had not noticed any whiffs from that 
direction. 

‘ I met an old gentleman outside,’ he 
continued, ‘ who seemed greatly excited 
in his mind about something.’ 

‘ Yes,’ she said ; ‘ that is my father.’ 

She looked much more like the Nurse 
Wingate he had liked so much — the 
Lassie he was beginning to do something 
more than like — as she said this, draw- 
ing herself up and looking him straight 
in the face with a little touch of defiance 


LASSIE. 


115 


in the truthful gray eyes, as there had 
been years ago when she had told the old 
vicar, ‘ If I can’t honour him myself, I 
won’t let any one else dishonour him,’ and 
had boxed Liza’s ears in consequence. 

6 What a good-looking girl she is ! ’ he 
thought. ‘ What a pity she should be 
wasted in this smelly hole of a place ! ’ 
But he thought now only what an ex- 
cellent nurse was wasted, not of an 
excellent wife. He had almost forgot- 
ten already that he had ever thought of 
her in that capacity, or that that had 
been the purpose of his long bicycle ride 
that day, or that it had filled his 
thoughts as he lay under the beech-tree 
and listened to the doves. 

I think, after all, Lassie had only taken 
his fancy ; a deeper feeling might have 


116 


LASSIE. 


survived the dirty apron and the dis- 
reputable old father and the smell of 
pig-sty. 

She was more herself after that defiant 
acknowledgment of her father, but she 
did not ask Dr. Milton to come in or to 
sit down ; and he was very glad she did 
not, for he suddenly realised that he had 
a long way to get home, and that the 
days were drawing in (it was barely 
past midsummer !), and that he had only 
thought he would look in for a minute 
as he happened to be passing — and he 
really thought he was speaking the 
truth. 

She answered when it was necessary, 
putting a respectful tone into her voice, 
though she had to make a desperate 
effort to do so ; and she called him ‘ Sir ’ 


LASSIE. 


117 


once, and would have liked to make a 
curtsy when he took his leave, but he 
would shake hands. Yes, she had seen 
him shake hands with a poor old cross- 
ing-sweeper who had swept a crossing 
near the hospital. 

‘ Oh, by the way/ he said as he went 
down the path, 4 I have just taken over 
a practice down in Devonshire. If you 
are ever that way you must come and 
give me a call.’ 

Devonshire is a large and vague 
address for any one wanting to pay a 
call; but it was only a compliment, as 
she knew, and as he knew too, so it was 
unnecessary to be more exact. 

She walked dow 7 n to the gate with 
him, and saw him mount his bicycle and 
ride away along the village street, and 


118 


LASSIE. 


past the forge, and over the bridge, and 
round the corner where the big elm 
stands — out of sight, out of her life; 
and then she turned back and picked up 
the broken bits of the plate, and, hardly 
aware of what she was doing, tried to 
fit them together. But there are some 
broken things that never, never can be 
mended. 

And Dr. Milton bicycled home another 
way ; and the roads were dusty and the 
sun scorching and the country less pic- 
turesque ; and he punctured his tyre, 
and was glad to have something with 
which to be angry, and on which to vent 
the undefined dissatisfaction that pos- 
sessed him. 


CHAPTER YIII. 


The war was over. The words ‘ Peace, 
be still/ had been spoken once again 
over the turbulent tide of battle and 
the stormy winds of warfare, and ‘ there 
was a great calm/ The clouds were 
clearing away that hung over the battle- 
field, the confusion and noise, and terror 
of the war had abated ; and Time, set- 
ting the campaign at a greater distance, 
was making plain much that seemed at 
the moment utterly incomprehensible, 
and showing how success and failure 
were alike the working out of the Divine 
will, using victory and defeat, brilliant 


120 


LASSIE. 


attack and dogged resistance, bloodshed, 
suffering, and death, great triumphs of 
generalship or heart-breaking mistakes 
and disasters, even treachery, cruelty, 
and cowardice, for His great purpose. 
The very fierceness of men shall turn 
to His praise. 

A nurse in the uniform of the army 
reserve was travelling out of London 
one October day, her blue cloak and red 
hood winning many a kindly glance 
from her fellow-passengers. One old 
woman, seeing the red cross on her 
sleeve, asked if she would let her give 
her a kiss for the sake of ‘ my Sam in 
the South Berks as died in ’orspital. 
I ’ve got his chorklet-box as the Queen 
sent him, God bless her ! ’ 

‘ I am going to see Lassie, as we used 


LASSIE. 


121 


to call her/ Nurse Nugent said to a 
friend who was seeing her off at Pad- 
dington — ‘ Nurse Wingate. I wonder 
if you remember her at St. Barnabas? 
A tall, good-looking girl.’ 

And the friend thought he did remem- 
ber Nurse Wingate. 

£ Do you know/ Alice Nugent went 
on, ‘ I don’t believe I should have 
volunteered if it had not been for her. 
She was much more keen about it than 
I was, and regularly worked me up. I 
am so glad she did. Only think of all I 
should have missed if I had not gone ! 
And she, poor girl, did not go after all. 
Her mother died, and she had to go 
home to her father.' 

And the friend said he had heard of 
it, ‘ poor girl ! ’ 


122 


LASSIE. 


Alice Nugent’s heart was glowing 
within her with all the memories of 
the past year ; for memories of work 
in a field-hospital, loyally, bravely, un- 
tiringly carried out, make a picture that 
glows with heaven’s own brightness. 
And the picture had only yesterday 
been framed in gold. It was a day to 
be remembered by many a 6 soldier of 
the Queen,’ for the war medals were 
presented by royalty itself, amidst the 
clash and clang of military bands, 
and the glitter and pomp of splendid 
uniforms, and the long lines of the 
troops who had faced death so bravely, 
and the enthusiastic shouts of thousands 
of spectators. 

And among the ‘ soldiers of the 
Queen ’ rank the field-hospital nurses, 


LASSIE. 


123 


and to some of these a royal red cross is 
given for conspicuous devotion to duty ; 
and among those so distinguished was 
Alice Nugent. 

Truly she had much to think of as the 
train bore her out into the country, 
where the woods and hedgerows were 
all in gala array, carried out by that un- 
rivalled decorator Autumn with lavish 
use of gorgeous colouring, crimson and 
gold, purple and orange, beside which 
the colour and gilding, garlands and 
bunting in the town make but a poor 
show. 

Lassie had been strangely in Alice 
Nugent's mind the last few days; she 
hardly knew why. The nurse who 
stood next her the day before had re- 
minded her of Lassie, ‘ though she was 


124 


LASSIE. 


not really the least like her when I came 
to look at her. It must have been some- 
thing in her height and the way she 
stood. And it was so curious that when 
my name was called it sounded exactly 
as if they said Lassie, though of course 
if it had been she they would not have 
called her by that name. It was odd 
how vivid it all was ; I quite expected 
her to step forward to receive her 
medal, and held back till some one 
touched me, and I found it was my 
turn.’ 

This was why she had made up her 
mind to go down to Midgely and find 
Lassie before she went home to her 
people in Devonshire. 

‘ I must show her my red cross, and 
tell her all about it, and that it was her 


LASSIE. 


125 


doing that I went at all, and that I shall 
always feel grateful to her/ 

That friend of Alice Nugent’s had 
given her a bunch of violets at the 
station, and she looked at them and 
smelt their delicious fragrance. Life 
seemed very, very bright to her just 
then. 

* He did not seem to remember much 
about Lassie,’ she said to herself ; ‘ and 
yet, in old days, I used to fancy that he 
liked her the best of the two. 

‘ What a pretty place ! ’ she said to 
herself — as Dr. Milton had done a few 
months before — as she entered the 
village. 

At the forge, the smith was leaning 
brawny arms on his hammer, and talk- 
ing to a group of men about some 


126 


LASSIE. 


subject of such interest, apparently, 
that they did not notice the stranger 
passing, and she did not like to inquire 
of them for Lassie’s house. 

Some girls, however, standing at the 
post-office door, though also deep in talk, 
were not too much engrossed for a good 
stare ; and they directed her to a 
thatched cottage close by, over whose 
roof a Virginia creeper threw a royal 
standard of crimson foliage, and from 
which a flight of white pigeons rose 
with a whirr as she opened the gate. 

‘ I don’t know,’ one of the girls called 
after her, ‘ whether you ’ll be in time.’ 

‘ In time ! What do you mean ? ’ 
‘Why, didn’t you know as she was 
ill ? Terrible bad, too, the doctor 
says ’ 


LASSIE. 


127 


But Alice did not stop to hear more, 
but opened the little wicket-gate and 
went into the cottage. 

If she had not seen many others 
about in the place, she would have 
thought that all the women in the vil- 
lage were assembled in the little room; 
and old Tim seemed to be dispensing 
some refreshment out of a black bottle, 
from w r hich he had evidently been sus- 
taining himself freely. 

They made way before her nurse’s 
dress and authoritative manner, her 
sudden appearance having taken them 
so by surprise that they had not time 
to wipe their lips and put their aprons 
to their eyes, or begin the recital of 
all they had done or would have done 
for the ‘poor dear.’ 


128 


LASSIE. 


She went straight up the wooden 
staircase to the room above, where 
Lassie lay dead. 

The room was stuffy and close, and 
the fourpost bedstead, with the patch- 
work quilt half-dragged off, and the 
sheets tumbled and soiled, and one of 
the curtains off its rings, looked squalid 
and wretched. Dirty cups and plates 
heaped the table, and some curious 
decoction in a mug had been upset 
and was dripping from the table on 
to the floor. 

Lassie’s hair — that long, dark hair 
Alice used to envy sometimes — was 
loose and tangled about her face, and 
the pillow lay on the floor, plucked 
away by one of the women as the end 
drew near, as it might contain a game- 


LASSIE. 


129 


feather, which makes it hard for the 
soul to get free if the dying head is 
lying on it. 

Lassie ! with her love of fresh air, 
and her dainty niceness that Alice 
used to laugh at sometimes and think 
mere fidgets. Lassie ! to die like this ! 

‘ She were a masterful one, and no 
mistake ! ’ the women said of Alice ; 
and they resented it at first, though 
later they learnt to bless Alice Nugent’s 
name. 

She cleared them out of the cottage 
in double-quick time, and gave old Tim 
such a talking to as he never forgot to 
the end of his days. And then, with 
loving, tender hands she did the last of- 
fices for her friend, and made the room 
tidy and sweet, with the gentle October 


130 


LASSIE. 


air blowing in through the wide-open 
window and stirring the soft little rings 
of hair on the dead girl’s forehead and 
the bunch of violets in her folded hands. 
You might almost have thought that 
Lassie knew of the change Alice had 
wrought in her surroundings, for there 
was a smile on her lips that had not 
often been there of late — that look 
of content that rests sometimes on 
dead faces — a foretaste, perhaps, of 
the wakening when we shall be satisfied. 

‘ She do make a beautiful corpse, and 
no mistake!’ the neighbours said, when 
curiosity compelled them to overcome 
their resentment at their summary dis- 
missal, and they asked leave to come 
in and see. ‘ She were a bit or’nary 
when she were alive — nothing much 


LASSIE. 


131 


to look at — but the lady nurse had 
set her out just for all the world like 
a lady, and put on one of them night- 
gowns as we used to make such game 
of when Lassie first came back and 
hung ’em on the line, as did n’t seem 
fit for the likes of she, with all them 
frills and lace. And she ’d put a 
bunch of voilets in her hands, and 
would n’t have no other flowers, though 
I told her I’d a lot of red dahlias, and 
them big yaller marigolds, as she was 
welcome to. And there ! if she had n’t 
gone and put a red cross medal — 
same as the soldiers have as has been 
to the war — on her breast. I could n’t 
think at first what it were as shone 
so, but a medal it were, and some- 
thing special, too, my ’usband says, 


132 


LASSIE. 


as they gives for extry devotion to 
duty — as if the poor gal had ever 
done anything! And there she let it 
bide till the coffin lid was closed down.’ 

But Dr. Milton’s violets were buried 
with Lassie. 

Tim Wingate went to the workhouse 
the day of his daughter’s funeral. 

‘And the best place for him,’ all 
the neighbours agreed; ‘and a thous- 
and pities he did n’t go when his wife 
died, as we always said as it would n’t 
answer with poor Lassie, as could n’t 
manage the old man a bit.’ 

Even Tim himself, after he had got 
over the first pang of the enforced 
cleanliness of the infirmary, allowed 
that he ’d ‘ better a-come sooner and 
had his leg seen to afore, as might 


LASSIE. 


133 


have saved him a deal of sufferin’ ; 
and he’d a lot to put up with from 
that gal, though he wouldn’t go for to 
speak a word agin her.’ But he made 
use of ‘ that gal’s ’ memory to twit 
the infirmary nurse — when she made 
light of his ailments — with Lassie’s 
superior training and attainments. 

But the Midgely people had no 
time to pay attention to old Tim’s 
grumbling, for it was then that the 
epidemic of typhoid attacked the vil- 
lage and made so many fresh mounds 
in the churchyard. There were sev- 
eral others ill when Lassie died, and 
Alice, out of love for her old friend, 
stopped on and helped with the nurs- 
ing, and won for herself the gratitude 
of the parish. 


134 


LASSIE. 


‘ We shall always feel grateful to 
you, Mrs. Milton/ the vicar’s wife 
used to say in after-years when they 
met. ‘ We can never forget all you 
have done for the village. Midgely 
is quite another place since that ter- 
rible typhoid time. It was quite prov- 
idential you should have come just 
then when poor Lassie Wingate died, 
and the lessons you taught the people 
of cleanliness and care in sanitary mat- 
ters have been of untold value. ’ 

And so Lassie’s sacrifice led to nothing 
but failure? Yes, in the sight of man, 
who can only judge by results; but 
perhaps a clearer sight than ours may 
judge differently, and that when the 
Son of Man shall come in His glory, 
and His soldiers are gathered from all 


LASSIE. 


135 


nations for the great day of reward, 
‘Well done!' may be said to many an 
one whom the world reckoned — and 
who reckoned himself — a miserable 
failure. 

And it may be that, among the 
crowns cast down before the throne, 
those painfully formed of meekly-borne 
failure and disappointment will not be 
among the least pleasing in the eyes 
of Him who also wore the crown of 
thorns. 


TIIE END. 


























BY THE AUTHOR OF 

“MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION” 


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